“Therefore we should make the Hail Mary neither a prayer nor an invocation because it is improper to interpret the words beyond what they mean in themselves and beyond the meaning given them by the Holy Spirit.”[100]
“…her giving birth is blessed in that it was spared the curse upon all children of Eve who are conceived in sin and born to deserve death and damnation. Only the fruit of her body is blessed, and through this birth we are all blessed.”[101]
“…in the present no one speaks evil of this Mother and her Fruit as much as those who bless her with many rosaries and constantly mouth the Hail Mary. These, more than any others, speak evil against Christ’s word and faith in the worst way.[102]
“Therefore, notice that this Mother and her Fruit are blessed in a twofold way—bodily and spiritually. Bodily with lips and the words of the Hail Mary; such persons blaspheme and speak evil of her most dangerously. And spiritually [one blesses her] in one’s heart by praise and benediction for her child, Christ—for all his words, deeds, and sufferings. And no one does this except he who has the true Christian faith because without such faith no heart is good but is by nature stuffed full of evil speech and blasphemy against God and all his saints.”[103]
“Again, when the angel greets Mary, he says, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you!” Up to now that has simply been translated according to, the literal Latin. Tell me whether that is also good German! When does a German speak like that, “You are full of grace”? What German understands what that is, to be “full of grace”? He would have to think of a keg “full of” beer or a purse “full of” money. Therefore I have translated it, “Thou gracious one,” so that a German can at least think his way through to what the angel meant by this greeting. Here, however, the papists are going wild about me, because I have corrupted the Angelic Salutation; though I have still not hit upon the best German rendering for it. Suppose I had taken the best German, and translated the salutation thus: “Hello there, Mary” —for that is what the angel wanted to say, and what he would have said, if he had wanted to greet her in German. Suppose I had done that! I believe that they would have hanged themselves out of tremendous fanaticism for the Virgin Mary, because I had thus destroyed the salutation.”[106]
“All three continental reformers, Luther, Calvin and Zwingli, had grown up as Catholics and conformed to the devotional practices of the Church, especially Luther, who had been an Augustinian friar while Zwingli had been a secular priest and Calvin a layman. Though there are considerable differences in the doctrinal positions of the three, they have this in common that they leave hardly any place for human free-will in their systems and attribute salvation wholly to the grace of God requiring no human cooperation. As a consequence they rejected the Catholic conception of holiness and with it the cult of the saints, including that of the blessed Virgin…[Luther] never tired of praising her faith as an example to all Christians and of admiring the graces God had showered on this simple girl. But he overemphasized this very simplicity that would allow of no human values or standing, but which is, indeed, quite unworthy of the gifts God has showered on it. So, in opposition to medieval and contemporary preachers who stated that one could never give too much to the Mother of God, Luther, on the contrary, asserted that one could never give her too little. She was never to be asked for help nor for anything else, since all was given by God alone.”[109]
Makes it sound like Mary herself was the one who produced Jesus. The *fruit* of her womb?
Really?